The Fanfiction Letters
by Val Evenstar
Summary: What advice would dear Uncle Screwtape give Wormwood as he takes on the job of tempting a fledgling authoress? Giftfic for Dearheart
1. Chapter 1

**The Fanfic Letters**

_by Val Evenstar

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**Author's Note: **Merry Christmas, DH! This is my first anti-badfic/anti-Sue piece, inspired partly by your enthusiastic efforts for Narnia and canon. But of course...

**Disclaimer:** C.S. Lewis. Always Lewis. He owns it. He's amazing. End of story.

**If You Haven't Read Screwtape: Warning- Spoilers. **_The Screwtape Letters_ was written by, guess who, C.S. Lewis. Basically, it is a collection of letters from Screwtape, an Under-Secretary in some department of Hell, to his nephew, Wormwood, a tempter in charge of a patient (ie, temptee). I should probably take a moment to mention that both of them are devils. Also, 'Our Father Below' refers to the Devil (if you couldn't figure that out) and 'the Enemy' to God. But please don't let this scare you... although I would highly recommend reading at least parts of _Screwtape_ before you read this.

Oh, and another thing that really should be mentioned: this is satire.

**If You Have Read Screwtape:** I know I can't even hope for a reasonable imitation of Lewis... but I have tried my best. Feel free to offer suggestions!

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"I have no intention of explaining how the correspondence which I now offer to the public fell into my hands...Not everything that Screwtape says should be assumed to be true even from his own angle...There is wishful thinking in Hell as well as on earth." 

- C.S. Lewis, from preface to _The Screwtape Letters_

My dear Wormwood,

I see that your patient has recently become a member of Fan Fiction . net. For this I must commend you, no matter how slight or accidental your role in the event might have been. I feel compelled to warn you, however, that this can be, as most things are, a double-edged sword.

You are correct in assuming that a great many authors in this particular community are firmly in the hands of Our Father Below, but you must not discount the influence of the Enemy's servants. Oh, they are out there, no matter how small their numbers. But keep in mind that the Enemy, like Our Father, is using this only as an avenue for His work. We can take equal advantage of the situation – in fact, records show that we have an overwhelming majority.

Take care, though, that you guide your patient properly. From your previous correspondence, I gather that this particular specimen you have been given charge of will be very easy to influence. You must use her youth and ignorance to the fullest extent. If there are no better ways to keep her feet firmly on the path to Our Father's residence, make sure she develops a weakness for the site. Let her examine the T and M -rated stories, and tempt her teenage curiosity with promises of fulfillment. There are many things she wonders about, I should think – let her imagination get the better of her.

There are not many things as powerful as the imagination, and as easily used for our purpose. It is because, as I explained to you earlier, it causes them to live in Fantasy. Fantasy is like the Future; the Enemy can make use of it, unfortunately – but it quite effectively removes humans from the Present. It causes them to think on What Might Be, as if they were thinking of the Future, but not quite with such a powerful effect, because their thoughts are then mostly directed to other characters who do not exist.

You may take advantage of this much more by suggesting that, instead of dreaming about fictional humans, your patient imagine herself in the fantasy-world. Thus her Fantasy will become nothing more than a harmless and perfectly impossible Future.

I was shocked to read how flippantly you described her thoughts about "the hawt King Peter". Do not take the matter lightly, and do not discourage her because the object of her lust is 'not a real person, and hence cannot lead to real sin'. Did Slubgob teach you anything? Even the Enemy Himself has said that to look at a person with lust is to commit adultery with them in their heart! Need I remind you that any such behaviour is to be encouraged? Because even if this character is fictional, I feel inclined to mention that the actor who portrays him is not. But you must press your advantage in this situation. Tell your patient that, since the 'King Peter' is not real and the actor is only his face, any romantic fantasies she might have are perfectly moral. In fact, encourage her mind to push the limits of her imagination and 'go all the way' as the humans term it in the vernacular.

Finally, I must caution you in one area. From your letter I deduce that the majority of the time your patient spends on this site is in the C.S. Lewis section. Be warned: Lewis was one of the Enemy's servants, and his works have the Enemy's fingerprints all over them. A good number of stories reflect this strongly; there are a dangerous number of influential authors fighting hard to do the Enemy's work. Make sure your patient does not fall into their company. Contact your co-workers who are with some of our best Lewis-fic authors, and encourage them to do their best to persuade their patients to welcome yours into their society. This, at least, may protect your fledgling fanficer for a while,

Your affectionate uncle,

Screwtape


	2. Chapter 2

**Author's Note: **Thanks to **Petraverd** and **Elspeth.Davidson** for letting me dump this piece on them and ask for feedback – I promise I won't do it again (well, to Petra anyway – ED is sort of obligated to put up with me :) )

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My dear Wormwood,

I was extremely pleased to find that your patient has started writing. I doubt I need to expound much on the benefits this can have for our work. Firstly, the act of writing involves great quantities of thought – for every sentence written, several possibilities go through a human's mind. Make sure that these possibilities are as pleasing as possible.

The genre that your patient has chosen to attempt was a pleasant surprise, but not unexpected, as we may categorize her as what humans call a 'teenage fangirl'. You must do your utmost to make sure her main character in this romance – I believe you mentioned the title was, "The High King's True Love" or something of the kind – is either a self-insertion or a Mary Sue.

Your goal throughout this writing process, besides tempting her to sexual fantasies, is to build her pride. This is most easily done with a Mary Sue, as self-insertions tend to be slightly less serious in nature, and are usually done by an author willing to make fun of himself. A Mary Sue is more subtle; make your patient believe that the girl in this romance is not her. Then she will feel free to endow the character with virtual perfection. And as both Our Father and the Enemy know, there was only one human who was ever perfect, and if your patient starts to imagine herself to be anywhere near that state, she is elevating herself to the level of a god. This is of course highly desirable for our cause, for if she thinks herself a god, she will see no need for a real one.

One weakness in most females your patient's age is that of vanity. Thanks to the good work of our colleagues in the Media and Fashion departments, a human's image is of great importance to him. The ideal person is a beautiful one – and this should be no exception when dealing with Mary Sues. Encourage your patient to fulfill her wishes through this character; let her give the Mary Sue beauty beyond measure, intelligence unsurpassed, qualities to make her sexually desirable, and perhaps a tragic past or some source of angst. By doing so, your patient will be able to compare herself with the character, and envy her, or feel some measure of discontent for what she herself does not have. Both of these are very pleasing to Our Father.

Initially it might be good for your patient to feel some degree of detachment from her character. This will not only boost her belief in her writing creativity, but also give her a great deal of freedom. While your patient may hold some reservations about having a romantic affair with an unmarried man, her character may be of quite the opposite sort. Having this initial separation between the two at the beginning may be quite desirable. Then as the writing progresses, and her imagination becomes more active – and I am entrusting this task, of course, to you – she will undoubtedly begin to identify even more strongly with the Mary Sue. As the separation becomes less and less, and as the plot grows thicker, her objections will become weaker and weaker, until she can readily and graphically imagine herself in such a relationship without qualm.

This, then, should be your main objective: to encourage your patient's fantasies and build her pride in a self-centered romantic escapade. But be subtle about it – and our greatest weapon for this is the Mary Sue,

Your affectionate uncle,

Screwtape

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**A/N:** More coming soon! I hope... 


	3. Chapter 3

**A/N:** I may have stretched matters a bit here, and exaggerated a lot, because this is my pet peeve. So please bear with me =)

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My dear Wormwood,

You must know how much it pleases our department to hear your latest report. I do wish, however, that you would emphasize more the things that are really important, and not waste so much time on trivialities.

Concerning your patient's first published work, then, you reported firstly that it was accompanied by much wishful fantasy and visions of fame, resulting in an immense swelling of pride and self-satisfaction. That it caused her to be snappish with her family later in the day, while pleasurable to hear about, is not of great import.

No, what truly useful is what you have almost brushed off in a sentence or two: her general abuse of the English language.

You may wonder what effect, if any, this small matter may have on your patient's eternal soul. In incompetent hands, it may be none at all – but an experienced tempter may use this defect to great advantage. Considering your performance with your last patient, I would not hesitate to place you in the former category.

However, I am willing to offer you some advice. It would be of great benefit to yourself if you read these next lines quite attentively.

You of course must think that the thing I am going to encourage you most in is your patient's use of the Enemy's name. As usual, you are incorrect. Though this is a valuable asset – blasphemy of any sort is greatly pleasing to Our Father Below – it needs little to no encouragement. In order to think that she is scrawling fiction worthy of adult eyes, your patient is already liberally using colourful phrases that quite frankly make me tingle with delight.

No, the real sin is indeed so subtle that most humans will not even term it one: the improper use and construction of the language. This can be anything from a misplaced comma to a misplaced modifier, from a misspelled word to an ill-constructed sentence.

I imagine that this concept will take a good deal of explanation for you to understand. Remember, then, that language is one of the Enemy's gifts to his human creatures. It is a mark of the spiritual being, and no matter how coarse it seems to bestow such a blessing upon a crude mix of animal and spirit as is man, the fact remains that humans share this ability with ourselves. Language allows them to communicate not only with each other but with us and – more terribly – the Enemy. You will recall that one of our first great victories over the Enemy – one of the first, but certainly not the last – was the division of the peoples at the Tower of Babel. This was accomplished not through strife but by a simple alteration of language that made it impossible for humans to communicate with and thus understand each other.

As for how it applies in this particular case – it has less actual bearing on your patient's soul than upon the souls of the readers. True, breeding heedless disrespect for any real talent and rules of English will lead to contempt for other regulations and people of skill, but this is not the main objective. Here we must consider the Enemy's servants and their weaknesses. Many of these zealots will read your patient's story if only because it is a Lewis based work. Since they possess the ability to distinguish good writing from bad, such a mutilation of language as your patient produces will infuriate them. If they force themselves through the story, their sense of disgust will only grow. With enough of this torment, they may eventually break and lose their patience and subsequently their tempers. Burning with this 'righteous anger' – which is easy to twist into true anger, or at least to taint – they will often express their opinions in reviews. In the best situations, they will let their indignation at the use of language to translate into a hatred of the author, and express this in the most colourful mannerism possible. In the worst, they will limit themselves to the criticism of the story. Hopefully even you will be able to see what an advantage this is for our cause.

Unfortunately there will always be some who, while bothered by the grammatical horrors, will manage to keep their heads and not fall into this temptation. This occurrence should be rare, if the other tempters are doing their job, but these small exceptions to the rule by no means give you license to do anything besides encouraging your patient in the general mutilation of the English language,

Your affectionate uncle,

Screwtape


	4. Chapter 4

**_Author's Note: _**Yes, I know I should be studying! But I was thinking about this today for some reason and decided since I'd written this chapter... last year... I might as well post it. Anyway, if you want to make exams much more bearable for me, read, review, and enjoy! goes back to studying

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My dear Wormwood,

It seems that your time with our Correction department after your miserable failure with your last patient has taught you something. In fact, if you are not quite careful, you will actually succeed with this one.

I would not, of course, hand out praise this high unless you had done something to merit it. But even old Slubgob has read your last letter and thinks you are doing a fine job. You spoke chiefly, as I recall, of your patient's introduction to incest.

Her defences must be already practically non-existent for her to even entertain this thought, and gone for good if she is considering writing it. My, what a pleasurable sensation! To read of a young, 'innocent' mind twisted beyond recognition into a putrid swamp of filth, just waiting to boil over and scorch her readers forever!

My delight, no matter how justified, is still not the end of this matter. Rather it is your patient's assured residence with Our Father which remains the goal of this enterprise. And as much as is in my powers to do so, I shall assist you in this task with my words.

My advice, then, is this: having worn down the patient's moral barriers, make sure that there is no possibility that they are raised again. This may take the form of, firstly, responding with anything other than anger and indignation to any comment which suggests incest is immoral; secondly, continuing on a diet of similar fictions, and aspiring to their levels, and thirdly, gradually becoming convinced that any societal conventions regarding relationships are merely those of the times, and are meant to be and indeed are best if challenged and changed.

Regarding the first, we may easily prescribe a method for exciting the desired behaviour. Since anger, or at the very least, hurt is almost invariably the human response to insult or criticism of any type, your job as tempter is already half done. While you may stir up her anger still further, be careful not to make her very defensive. For if she attempts a defence of her work, some part of her which still remembers what her parents taught her years ago may surface and perhaps agree with any objections to brother-sister relationships. And as you know, an argument requires some sensibility of thought; no matter how rare this may be in your patient, the last thing you want her doing is thinking rationally about what she has written, for this will undoubtedly come down to who is Right and who is Wrong – herself or her critics. While it would be most excellent if she were to prove herself Right, there is still the possibility that such questioning would cause herself to be unsure of what she is writing, and revert to more conventional romance. And we need not mention the consequences of deciding that she is Wrong. No, no, Wormwood, simply use the anger, for it is blind to reason.

Convincing your patient to read more of the same stuff she writes should also present no difficulty. There is some danger that she will grow bored of it – but the delicious thing about Sin is that it tends to taste even better the more it is consumed, while Good, when done for the sake of simply not sinning, is easily tired of. So do encourage her to do her research before she writes – she must know, because she could not write a good story without it, every detail and possibility associated with incest. Fill her mind with it, and it will not only flow out onto the paper but into her actions.

These are wonderful times for your patient to live in – everything is now and everything is relative; nothing is permanent or absolute. Furthermore, most of what she was taught at an early age was not well explained to her, so that now, if she bothers to ask why incest is wrong, the answer she will most likely get is something that translates to a 'because we told you so' from her parents. It is the rare person now who will firmly tell her that it is wrong and give her the solid reasons why – because it is not natural or because it leads to undesirable consequences – and even a rarer person who will declare that the Enemy did not design man this way and forbids it along with all other kinds of immorality. Thank Hell for that – and also that, even if she were told so, your patient would likely only consider it as 'another point-of-view' (if she gave it any thought at all), not the hard Truth, and wave it away as such. In this way the Enemy's will and wishes can be projected as antiquated notions, things of yesterday, and a constricting and narrow worldview.

So by all means let your patient think that 'they are so adorable together' and 'it's meant to be' and brush away any qualms and morals she might have regarding the Enemy's institution of Family,

Your affectionate uncle,

Screwtape

P.S. However, I expect _you_ to have some regard for our relation, and give me the respect I deserve. Otherwise I might be tempted to eat you.


	5. Chapter 5

A/N: Oh hi...it's been years. And presently I couldn't even tell you what the Screwtape Letters style sound like, but I came across this unpublished chapter the other day and decided to air it out. I hope it doesn't suck. Originally I had several other chapters planned and a decent story arc, but realistically I am never going to get around to completing those, so I hope this at least leaves the reader with the impression that all is not lost for our young authoress.

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My dear Wormwood,

It is with the greatest disappointment that I read your most recent correspondence. I had dared to hope for your success on this assignment after the miserable failure of your previous one, but now I have no hope that even Our Father Below will be able to salvage the wreck you have made of your career.

Is it true, as you suggest, that your patient has acquired a BETA-READER?

I try to remain optimistic, but this news is of the gravest kind. The destruction wreaked upon the fanfiction community by this singular breed of monsters is legendary. Perfectly terrible works have turned half-decent, and, in some cases, even quite good through their intervention. I shall not even mention the strides – small and halting as we have worked to make them – beta-readers have made in preserving the canon.

Do you know nothing, Wormwood? Are you a complete moron?

Don't bother to answer; I already know. But, because I am, after all, your uncle, I shall do what I can in an attempt to salvage your sorry hide.

Firstly, I must recount to you the exact details of how this situation came about. Negligence, nephew, negligence is what has brought about this horror. I told you to plant your patient in the company of our Lewis authors, and at first you did. I repeatedly urged you to ensure that your patient returned flames and kept reading Mary-Sue, incest, and slashfics, and for a while she did. But now you must be honest with me, Wormwood – how long has your patient been corresponding with the abomination that is now her beta-reader? Be truthful – even though it is entirely against your nature to do so.

If my insight serves me correctly, as it usually does, it would not come as a great surprise to find that contact between the two has gone on for quite some time. You, not recognizing it as potentially disastrous, were too focused on other things – or perhaps, as is more likely, too lazy to trouble yourself with the matter – to put a stop to this behaviour.

The full impact of this mistake will undoubtedly haunt you for years. But just in case that is not sufficient, allow me to expound upon some of the ramifications.

Do you know how much influence a beta-reader can have on an author? Again, there is no need to answer this question. Your actions speak well enough on your behalf. Now, if the beta-reader had been one of our authors, this could be a good thing. This, however, is not the case. Now your patient will feel the need to have another validate her work and approve of it. As she actually respects – respects! - her beta, she will actually _strive_ for this approval. She will make conscious efforts to please her beta, and eagerly adopt any suggestions, no matter how trivial they seem – and let me remind you, what seems mere triviality to human minds can really be of extreme importance. Your patient will eventually adopt her beta's standards of writing; this may also lead to a definition of 'quality' fanfiction, and if your patient turns into a critic of the stuff I shall be most violently displeased. Then anything she reads will be measured against an invisible ruler, which will inevitably lead to labeling some fics as 'good' and others as 'bad'! And a return to standards of any kind, much less moral ones in regard to her reading material, is exactly what we have worked so hard to avoid! Rather, what _I_ have worked so hard to warn you about, and what _you_ have blatantly tossed to the wind.

Why, your patient's scrawlings may become legible, and even have some tinge of quality beyond that of perverted drivel. No more grammar and spelling mistakes – no beautifully mangled paragraphs three pages long – the utter absence of Mary Sue and explicit bedroom scenes – it's enough to make me weep, Wormwood.

But where I weep you may be assured that Our Father will burn with rage – so you had better correct this heinous error soon, or I shall remain,

Your sorely disappointed uncle,

Screwtape


End file.
